Perceptual Learning

Article excerpt

Since its description in 1991, many subsequent researchers have used Kami and Sagi's texture-discrimination task to demonstrate the specificity of perceptual learning. In this task, observers must locate three adjacent line segments (the target) whose orientations differ from those in the rest of the display (the dis tractors). Performance is limited by a post-stimulus mask and, with the right kind of practice, observers can learn to perform quite well, even when the stimulus-mask onset- asynchrony (SOA) is very short.

Wang et al. replicated this primary result, but unlike Kami and Sagi they found a protocol that facilitated performances with previously untrained targets and distractors. In this "double training" protocol, observers alternate between the task that Kami and Sagi devised and another task that is also limited by a post-stimulus mask. …